Welcome to Ars Technica, version 7.0

The new site, new features, new sections, and more.

Let me be the first to welcome you to ArsTechnica version 7.0. After nearly 14 years and six major redesigns, it’s my sincere pleasure to introduce you to the best ArsTechnica yet. In what follows, I will provide an overview of what this redesign is all about. While I will address some of my favorite features of the new Ars, I can’t hit them all.

But first, here’s an update on where we are as a publication. In the four years since being acquired by CondéNast, we have grown tremendously by honing our craft and listening to our readers. The results have been phenomenal: traffic has exploded 60 percent in that time, and unique visitors grew 67 percent. We now average a global reach of over 10 million readers, for 60 million to 80 million pageviews per month. We routinely produce stories and reviews that do more than 1 million pageviews, but our secret is that we are never afraid to spend time (and thus money) on the important stories that won’t necessarily do those huge numbers. In the end, it’s the quality of the work that matters most. With our latest redesign, we believe we have found the best way to showcase that on the Web.

Pardon us while we redecorate your house

Redesigning this website has always been an emotionally exhausting experience. The chief reason is simple: many of you have graciously, fantastically, and enthusiastically made ArsTechnica your Internet home (four out of five Ars readers don’t let a day go by without visiting us). We know that a major redesign can feel like someone has broken into your house and redecorated it while you were away, but the changes we made for our seventh major redesign project should make ArsTechnica even more authentic and engaging. The improvements are, we hope you’ll agree, worth the short shock of novelty.

The changes start with our new three-column front page. A manifestation of the journalistic philosophy that drives ArsTechnica, the new tripartite division of content should make it easy for you to get what you want from Ars.

As a publication born before "blogs," but at the same time wholly “digitally native,” we’ve long wrestled with the question of how to best contribute to the online world with a small-but-amazing staff. From the beginning, we knew that we didn’t want to become a volume publisher, cranking out story after story. This proved to be the right call. With many of us coming out of higher education, we took a more academic approach to our work. What we most wanted to produce was solid analysis, quality arguments, and sharp writing—what we hoped to offer was “insight.” Start with that and readers would follow. (They did.)

That’s why the Ars staff has always loved long-form journalism. We've been producing long-form pieces—we call them “features”—since the first week of our existence back in the summer of 1998, long before it was fashionable (or profitable) to put long content online, where others would simply rewrite it. Our new design gives our features prime real estate: the far-right column of the site. The most recent feature story occupies an enlarged promotional spot that spans two columns near the top of the page, which allows us to draw special attention to some of our most prized work. It also gives us a better opportunity to showcase the excellent art and photography that our team (led by our creative director, Aurich Lawson) provides. And even more features are in our future.

But not every story needs a 3,000-word treatment. Our “reports," listed in the far-left column on the front page, are primarily news-driven original reporting. Typically, this represents what we consider to be the day's most important news. While we usually post only one feature a day, reports are like the day’s heartbeat. Even though we might publish 15 of these in a (very) busy day, we will do our best to combine art and photography with descriptive headlines and supporting deks (very short summaries, under the title) to highlight what is distinctive about each report.

Last but certainly not least, we have the middle column that we call “On The Radar.” Everyone on the Ars staff is obsessed with technology, which can sometimes make our stated goal of delivering to you the day's "most important" news rather difficult. Why? Because people with unhealthy obsessions with technology often manage to convince themselves that practically every story is “need to know.” But that's simply not true, and it’s incumbent on us to figure out how best to cover all of the day's news in a meaningful way. So “On the Radar” will be a river of quick-flowing updates, devoted to topics we find interesting or important, but where we aren't going to do additional reporting. We have zero interest in making small stories look big—or putting lipstick on a pig.

We’re very excited about this new presentation of our work, but anyone who dislikes the new three-column layout can return to the comforting world of reverse chronology with a single click (it’s in the upper right beside the word “Layout”). I earnestly believe that the three-column layout is by far the best, though, and I hope you'll give it a try.

Simplified, powerful, and personalized navigation

The feature I hope you’ll use most lives up in our new, persistent navigation bar. “My Stories” (beta) gives readers a dashboard that can be personalized. We’re launching My Stories as a beta feature because we are only beginning to scratch the surface of what we can do with it, and we want to hear more from you, too! At present, My Stories will use your authenticated state to personalize what it shows. Users who allow cookies will see updates since their last visit, along with recommended content, while users who log in will also see a reverse-chronological list of discussions they’ve participated in, sorted by update (it’s quite awesome). Better yet, My Stories is accessible from every content page, meaning it is easier than ever to hop from story to story.

Another major change pertains to our site sections. Now listed under “Main Menu,” we’ve expanded to include two new sections that highlight the work of two recent additions to our staff. Ministry of Innovation is the new home of business coverage on Ars, led by Senior Business Editor Cyrus Farivar. Risk Assessment, led by IT Security Editor Dan Goodin, will house white hat/black hat chronicles, hactivism, exploits, and all that good stuff. We also did a bit of housekeeping, renaming our science section from Nobel Intent (which apparently very few people “got”) to The Scientific Method. Our IT section has been renamed simply “The Technology Lab,” which reflects our conviction that IT is no longer the domain of niche companies and topics, but is now, in fact, a groundswell movement where the most interesting innovations almost always start in consumer spaces.

Mousing over "Main Menu" also shows you current Special Features and additional customization options, including our legendary “black site” option.

Promoted comments…

Another new feature I’m excited about is Promoted Comments. With our new design begins the process of improving reader participation. The first phase is Promoted Comments, which gives Ars editors and writers the ability to “promote” a reader comment from the comments section to the bottom of the actual story. We will now endeavor to promote the best one or two comments from reader discussions into the story, with an eye toward one goal: making you the most informed readers in tech. This means that we’ll promote the best comments, not necessarily the comments that agree with our reporting. It's our hope that this practice will help raise the signal-to-noise ratio in article discussions by celebrating the best comments.

…and Promoted work from the Web

Two special features present in the middle column deserve explanation. First up, we have "Ars Editors Picks," a list of our favorite stories from elsewhere on the Web. Ars 6.0 had something similar, but it was small and hard to read. With this new layout, we put it front and center, believing that our value to you is primarily in our ability to convey great content, even if we’re not the origin. When another site does something truly fantastic, we are going to put it here.

The second feature is a dynamically updated list of the week's top stories. These are the stories people are reading and talking about on Ars.

We have also created a special place for readers to leave constructive feedback and bug reports. We'll be opening it up when the site is fully functional, shortly. There's no point in reporting problems just yet, as we roll everything out over the next few hours.

Much more to come

In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be delving into some of the new features more—and introducing others. I’m also excited to say that we’re working on a feature story detailing the technical aspects of this move, which have been tremendous. On that account, a special word of thanks is due to Technical Director Jason Marlin and Lead Programmer Lee Aylward. Not only did we completely redesign the site, but we also migrated content management systems as well. A formidable feat, one these two did with aplomb.

Most important, I thank you for reading Ars Technica and for making possible so many incredible friendships, stories, and experiences. Our enterprise begins and ends with you. I hope you love Ars 7.0.

Update

Yesterday was the most trafficked Ars redesign launch ever, and as amazing and inspiring as that might be, we were overwhelmed. We knew it was going to be a battle; no amount of testing can truly simulate millions of readers doing their thing on this site.

We’re very sorry for the downtime and the difficulties experienced with logging into the site yesterday. We believe that we have both issues under control now, but we do ask for your patience as we continue to squash bugs and make improvements based on your comments.

Despite the site troubles yesterday, we did receive a tremendous amount of feedback, and we’re simply blown away by your passion for the site and our work. We welcome your constructive feedback and problem reports, as always.

In closing, I want to encourage the skeptics out there to try the default three-column view for the next few weeks. Our new design was born to handle the increase in content that comes from expanding our staff (and we’re still hiring), and a need to stop burying our best original work under minor stories that we feel obligated to cover. If you decide it’s just not for you, note that you can revert to a single reverse-chronological list (and change the site theme, too!).

Thank you for reading Ars Technica. Keep the constructive feedback coming, and please be patient as we work through bugs and other issues.

406 Reader Comments

Yesterday was the most trafficked Ars redesign launch ever, and as amazing and inspiring as that might be, we were overwhelmed. We knew it was going to be a battle; no amount of testing can truly simulate millions of readers doing their thing on this site.

We’re very sorry for the downtime and the difficulties experienced with logging into the site yesterday. We believe that we have both issues under control now, but we do ask for your patience as we continue to squash bugs and make improvements based on your comments.

Despite the site troubles yesterday, we did receive a tremendous amount of feedback, and we’re simply blown away by your passion for the site and our work. We welcome your constructive feedback and problem reports, as always.

In closing, I want to encourage the skeptics out there to try the default three-column view for the next few weeks. Our new design was born to handle the increase in content that comes from expanding our staff (and we’re still hiring), and a need to stop burying our best original work under minor stories that we feel obligated to cover. If you decide it’s just not for you, note that you can revert to a single reverse-chronological list (and change the site theme, too!).

Thank you for reading Ars Technica. Keep the constructive feedback coming, and please be patient as we work through bugs and other issues.

What happened to the Microsoft, Open Source and other dedicated sections? Are they merged in the IT one? Then why is it that Apple still has a dedicated section?

While I'm on it, the very first character of each story, the one with special adornment, doesn't display at all on the mobile version of Ars on my Windows Phone.Another little gripe I'm having with this mobile version is that it is now not possible to conveniently filter content by sections.

In all seriousness, I'm not sold on the new design yet. It's not the layout that bothers me, though I do find it very busy, it's the fonts. They look exceedingly low-res on my work machine (Chrome in XP). My first impression was that it was a poorly implemented Flipboard ripoff.

I'm willing to keep an open mind about it, and I can definitely understand why the changes were made, so I'll try it out for a few weeks. I can already say I don't hate it as much as I did yesterday.

UPDATE: The low-res look was because Chrome was zoomed in to 125%. Switching back to 100% makes it look nice. My other qualm about the front page being busy still stands.

When I first got to the site yesterday, my mind freaked. Too much going on, but after using it for a day, I love it. It’s not art to hang on a wall, it’s a website to be used, and I think this design nails it for info addicts like me.

MyStories is fucking killer. KILLER!

Change is always shocking, but I think this is a big improvement and will increase my visits here. Great job to everyone involved.

My one complaint is this: the dark site feels harder to read than the dark site before. Are the colors slightly off? Other than that, I am loving this. Using light site for now.

What's the status of RSS? I'm not seeing updates coming through on the old feed, and your Facebook, etc. links seem to be hashtagged - are you guys really relying on Javascript to drive those links (if so: ugh!), or is that an oversight (if so: huge redesign, I understand), or is this an issue with my browser somehow (if so: huh?)?

Edit: I note that the "RSS Feeds" link at the bottom works just fine; it's just the pretty icons that don't seem to be working.

Edit2: Those RSS feeds are, however, not updating yet. You may already be aware of these issues; just wanted to make sure.

What happened to the Microsoft, Open Source and other dedicated sections? Are they merged in the IT one? Then why is it that Apple still has a dedicated section?

The short version is this: no one visited those landing pages. This made it clear to us that people did not want to read about these topics in isolation, so we rolled it into one place. We suspect part of the reason is that both topics are incredibly broad.

The Apple section home page, on the other hand, receives a ton of traffic to its dedicated landing page. Somewhere on the order of 1000x more traffic.

Let me be clear: I am talking about the landing pages, not the stories themselves. MSFT and OSS stories do tremendous traffic, but their sections were a waste of real estate. No one cared to visit them. For six years. It was time for something different.

"but our secret is that we are never afraid to spend time (and thus money) on the important stories that won’t necessarily do those huge numbers. In the end, it’s the quality of the work that matters most."and"What we most wanted to produce was solid analysis, quality arguments, and sharp writing—what we hoped to offer was “insight."

I cannot imagine what I learnt by visiting this site - most of it fun and astonishing, some inspiring and a lot of valuable knowledge. Thanks a lot! Is there any better reward for a day's work than knowing that you have contributed to make the world wiser? This is what we need.

Can't stand the new lay-out. Then again, it's just in keeping with "modern website design", and I'm just not a fan of what's popular now. Just have to wait until things cycle around again as they inevitably do. In the meantime, peace out Ars.

Looks pretty good. I think the three-column layout was a good idea. I'll certainly give it a chance, though I'm sure it will take some adjusting- I'm quite used to the chronological layout. The color scheme is pretty nice as well. It's nice to see a graphical redesign that didn't just go overboard for the hell of it. (I'm looking at you, GNOME 3.)

Unrelated: design-wise, two thoughts. (I offer them confident you'll throw them away if you dislike them! (1) You need more white space on the front page. The reason people are having a hard time with finding an anchor - per JoshV - is because the content doesn't have any room to breathe. The fonts are great, and I appreciate the headline size; but the article headlines are just so close together that it's causing a clutter effect. This is one reason the two-column layout works a bit better; the content has room and space, rather than feeling all jammed on top of itself. The three-column layout isn't bad, per se; it just needs some elbow room.

(2) You've got all the framework in place; make this responsive! The reflows should be fairly straightforward, given how you have the column blocks laid out already. (I'm nearly always more a fan of a responsively-laid-out site than a mobile-specific site; at least giving the users a choice is a huge plus.)

Looking forward to seeing the site design continue to improve.

An edit: the "Main Menu" just links me back to the homepage and the "My Stories" is giving me a 404.

A final edit: I think you could clear up the white space/clutter issue I mentioned pretty simply, actually - or at least make a dramatic improvement. The current layout doesn't prioritize any sort of story over the other, aside from the single highlighted feature story (and, somewhat, the Editor's Picks... good stuff there, and great use of typography and color to set it apart). The middle news stories are smaller, shorter, and less "important" (so to speak) than the main content on the left side or the features on the right. Drop the text size on the headers for those accordingly, and you'll vastly improve the visual hierarchy on the site.

The short version is this: no one visited those landing pages. This made it clear to us that people did not want to read about these topics in isolation, so we rolled it into one place. We suspect part of the reason is that both topics are incredibly broad.

The Apple section home page, on the other hand, receives a ton of traffic to its dedicated landing page. Somewhere on the order of 1000x more traffic.

Even though this might be the case, I'd strongly encourage Ars to reconsider bringing back the Microsoft and Open Source sections. Even if they don't get as many hits, by removing them Ars risks alienating MS fans or anyone who dislikes bias in general. Your intentions are practical and sincere by removing those sections, but for the sake of consistency and fairness, and for public appearance, I recommend you bring those sections back. This waste of real estate you mentioned can't be that crippling.

My first thought was "if you haven't got anything nice to say, don't say anything at all", an easy inclination to follow since the commenting was broken.

I've had time to mellow since then, and the new look has grown on me a little. I won't say I *like* it, that would be going to far, but it works and I can live with it (and I may even grow to appreciate it).

I hate the new layout. Previously I only needed to log on the main page and scroll down to see all of the latest stories in chronological order. Now I have to follow two, or three columns at once. That's not very user-friendly at all. Especially if you've been gone for a couple of days and want to see what you've missed.

In a nutshell: waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much going on compared to the elegant simplicity of the old design.

The layout I can get used to, but the much-reduced sub-header lead in to the stories I don't like at all. A single, tuncated and stylized sentence following the title doesn't give me a lot of information about whether I'm likely to find a story interesting, and may lead to dimished use of the site for "quick break" reading at the office.

I won't comment on visual styling preferences, but a couple things aren't working for me (Chrome incognito mode, Win7):

1) Search. No results when I try to search???2) I don't see the number of comments on a story like there used to be. I use this to gauge popularity and to estimate how much time I'll likely spend reading them

Also, I really like the promoted comments idea! Next step in improving the comments section would be the ability to have a 'conversations' view in addition to the simple timeline you have now. I like that you are focusing on the comments, as these are a huge value-add to many Ars articles.

I used that sidebar on pretty much every site visit. Before or after reading an article it was a great way to quickly survey what was going on in the various coverage areas. Probably 90% of the articles I read were opened directly from that sidebar.

As far as section deletions goes:

Ken Fisher wrote:

The short version is this: no one visited those landing pages. This made it clear to us that people did not want to read about these topics in isolation, so we rolled it into one place.

I almost never visited any of the topic landing pages, but I used the sidebar to sort headlines all the time. The only section I used a lot that seems to have disappeared is the open source one, which I find disappointing, but not really surprising. People specifically interested in open source things get used to being few and far between.

Really liking the new site design. Trying 3 column as suggested and finding it's growing on me quickly. Still having issues with the RSS feeds, although it seems like I've got them working by using something I found in the forums instead of the feed listed clicking the RSS link. Certainly had a few bumps trying to get this design up, but it's looking quite good!

This is awful, index/ is gone so my links are broken now and firefox 3.6.28 cannot display the page properly. Some of us are still using PPC Macs, that's what we get for using 5 year old equipment I guess.

Whats the timeline for some love to the mobile version? I used to visit "arstechnica.com" and it came nicely fomatted for mobile. Now the bookmark on my homescreen leads to the desktop-looking page. navigating to m.arstechnica.com does the same.Or does this work for everyone else, I think my phone has an odd user-agent so maybe it's just me?

I have two complaints about the new site design: - comments are in gray, not in black; the contrast is between gray and white is not as good as between black and write (I'm using civis forums instead to read them) - the floating top menu cannot be turned off; it takes space

Additionally, at the end of the story you don't see the number of comments to the story.

Whats the timeline for some love to the mobile version? I used to visit "arstechnica.com" and it came nicely fomatted for mobile. Now the bookmark on my homescreen leads to the desktop-looking page. navigating to m.arstechnica.com does the same.Or does this work for everyone else, I think my phone has an odd user-agent so maybe it's just me?

Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click "View Mobile site". It's rather nice except there is so far no way to filter content by sections.

The desktop version: its ok, I feel its quite cluttered though, and requires a lot of scrolling up and down - especially as the 'best of the web' is above some ars stories. Maybe I'll get used to it, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt so far. Still think it'll be too cluttered to see the 'main' stories you have on the first column, make them bigger.

Hmm... ok, I've just seen the mobile version and its good - but why isn't it on by default when browsed from my android device. It always used to be!

Whats the timeline for some love to the mobile version? I used to visit "arstechnica.com" and it came nicely fomatted for mobile. Now the bookmark on my homescreen leads to the desktop-looking page. navigating to m.arstechnica.com does the same.Or does this work for everyone else, I think my phone has an odd user-agent so maybe it's just me?

Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click "View Mobile site". It's rather nice except there is so far no way to filter content by sections.

Ah, so there is - thanks! I did that, and re-created the homescreen link and now it works. Cheers.

Only downside is however the icon for the shortcut is generated (favicon.ico?) didnt work so not the button is a rendering of the page itself (so has the image from the BitCoin store) as opposed to the Ars logo. But thats a small-time complaint, am just happy can read on the go for now.

[edit] Oh, I just realised you have to hit 'view mobile site' not only on the main page, but also once on a story. Then it seems to stick for all stories

Just a helpful (?) note: There's a healthy discussion about the re-design, bugs, etc. going on in the "Ars Help & Feedback" forum; Aurich has been really active there trying to chase down bug reports and respond to criticisms. People who don't venture beyond the front page may want to look there to see if any issues you're having have already been recorded in the Giant Book Of Bugs™ (amen).

Despite all the chaos yesterday, I noticed writers and editors will still posting the usual flurry of stories; This was really appreciated. I used it as an opportunity to read some content and get used to the design. With a new CMS in place too, I'm sure their day wasn't fun either, so I wanted to say thank you.

The "Use forum for article discussions?" option in user preferences seems to be currently disabled as it doesn't respect the view comments in forum option. Will this feature be re-enabled or is it going away? The inline comments do seem to convey more of the forum information and might grow on me, the user badges are a nice touch, but I do like the option to have article comments go to the forums.

Nice work on the redesign, although I admit to going back to the 2 column layout. Maybe I'll give the 3 column another try.

I'm very disappointed that there's still another page load to view comments. Please load them right away, and then hide them!

Bad thing about the new site is I feel compelled to post a lot so I can get my ranking up I have been reading for years but only got an account recently (and rarely have anything intelligent to contribute!)

Ken Fisher / Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation.